Belgium strikes again! (Mustard sauce ... mmmm....)

I had a fun day today. I went on a little road trip down to Rednersville to visit a friend's art exhibit and gallery. I took highway 7, and scooted down through Tweed to get there. A lovely drive, if you happen to be in the neighbourhood!

Here's a sample painting (pardon the copyright infringement, Brandy!) just to get you in the mood for a great meal!

So, I had plenty of time to think on this drive today (like 6 hours) and decided that the mustard sauce I saw the other day (in my glorious Belgian cookbook) had to go for a test run. You're welcome to join me....

This is a pretty basic sauce recipe -- the technique transposes to most pan sauces, so it's useful to have in your repetoire. I also cooked up a side-order of kale, and this is also a useful basic technique, so here we go! Basictechnique city, and we're the mayors!

The kale is the cavolo nero that miraculously survived in my garden last winter. It did set seed, by the way, so I'll be sure to start working on a winter hardy strain of this beautiful vegetable (as I threatened before, cavolo Joe will be available at a market near you in, oh, 20 years or so). 

I had a flash-back that suggested I had already done this recipe before, but I was mistaken. I did post a collards recipe that is quite similar, but this version skips the blanching step because kale is WAY less leathery.

ANYWAY, the first step is to get some bacon going. I tend to use too much bacon all the time, but I like it, so there.

Once the bacon has fried up a bit, add some shallots to the pan and stir those around for a minute or two.

Pop the kale in the pan and give it a stir.

Add some salt and about 1/4 cup of water, and...

...pop the lid on. Drop the heat down to fairly low and set your timer for 15 minutes.

Now, for the mustard sauce (which I probably should have mentioned goes on pork chops!).

Get your pan warmed up and add some oil. Once the oil is warm, get some butter in there and let the water sizzle out of it.

(A note on the pan! You don't want non-stick -- I don't even have one! The whole idea behind this kind of pan sauce is to create a fond which is a fancy French way of saying crispy-brown-bits-stuck-to-the-bottom-of-your-pan. You can't do this in non-stick pans since, by definition, nothing sticks. Cast iron works great, but lately I've become partial to my de Buyer blue steel pan which is nice and heavy, supposedly manufactured in some kind of "environmental" way, and does a kick-butt job of frying up pork chops in a fond-friendly way. If you find one, snag it! -- you won't be disappointed! That cute rubber "B" in the handle can be popped out whenever you need to stick the pan in the oven too -- how genius is THAT?!)

Whew. Where was I? Oh, yeah. Salt the pork chops and drop them in the pan. They'll need about 3-4 minutes per side depending on how thick they are and how hot your pan is -- mine is on 6 heat (one over medium).

While these babies are sizzling away, you can prepare your mustard sauce. The basic idea behind a pan sauce is to fry something up, leaving behind a nice fond (a.k.a. crusty bits). Then you de-glaze the pan (i.e. loosen up the crusty bits) with some kind of liquid (preferably, and usually, booze), reduce the liquid, add some kind of fat (cream or butter), warm that up, and serve. So, that's what we're about to do!

The fat used in this sauce is cream. It gets mixed with mustard to give a bit of punch (other sauces use fruit instead of mustard -- blueberries are AWESOME, for example). I found a source of organic whipping cream in bottles (how great is THAT!). For mustard, I recommend a grainy one. If you can get Meaux mustard from the Pommery family, then go for it -- it's my favourite!

The official recipe calls for a cup of cream. I used about half a cup since I was only cooking two chops. It also calls for two tablespoons of mustard -- in the spirit of halving, I used one. Whisk these two merry friends together.

The booze portion of this recipe can be beer or wine (or chicken stock if you are under some kind of prohibition, or vegetable stock if you are under some kind of vegetarianism -- you should probably skip the pork and bacon in that case...). I was about to go for wine, since I find it such a shame to dump beer into a frying pan instead of a glass, but OH FRABJOUS DAY! I discovered that I had about 12 bottles of Betelgeuse hiding in the basement. I MUST have hit my head to have forgotten about these. Admittedly, they aren't exactly "Summer" beers -- they clock in at 9.1%, so swilling back a couple of pints while at the BBQ can lead to serious problems (like fires, burns, and charred food -- with side benefits of euphoria, but that's beside the point). So, to make I long story short (well, to make a short story shorter), I went for the Betelgeuse.

Holy diversions! Ok. Once the chops are cooked, remove them to a plate and cover. :D I'm smiling because there is ANOTHER beer in the picture! How did that get there?!

REMEMBER, you don't need to use foil or plastic!

Ok, now here's your fond! (I am so fond of fond.)

Pop some chopped shallots in the pan. (I guess I should have done one of those ingredient shots at the start that I usually do. If you're a read the whole recipe type, then you should be ok, if you're a fly by the seat of my pants and wing it disaster type then start chopping! I confess a fondness for the latter, but am not unsympathetic to the former.)

Once the shallots have softened for a few minutes, fire the beer in there. Again, I failed to measure -- basically you want enough to coat the pan (this leaves most of the bottle for slurping down later). This is the de-glazing part, so use your spatula to loosen-up all the crusty bits right now!

Sizzle the beer down until it makes a glaze (ok, i know it's weird to de-glaze to make a glaze, but bear with me). You know you're in the ballpark when your spoon leaves tracks.

Ok. Now the hard part. Adding cream to a hot pan can lead to disaster -- a.k.a. separated sauce. I used to work at The Wellington Pub in Kingston for awhile, and the cook (Dusty Street -- yes, that is his real name: he showed me his driver's license) and I were talking about such sauces one night and he told me about tricks using ice cubes etc. to remedy a separation. Frankly (and Frank, this means you!), I prefer to avoid the whole problem. So what am I getting at? Well, I'm getting at "drop the temp." Your pan is hot, and too much heat will separate your cream into fat and water yielding a gross sauce that looks like cottage cheese. If you drop the element down to lowish (say 3?) the heat will fall enough when you add the cream to keep the whole thing together (I hope).

So, drop the temp and add your cream. I read somewhere (once, I have no idea where or when) that a proper cream sauce requires the cream to get a little cooked. A raw cream flavour will not get you into the zone. So cook the cream down for a couple of minutes so all the flavours can mingle properly.

And you're done! Serve up with your nice kale.

If you have left-over sauce you can save it for breakfast or something. I, however, went back to the pan and ate it all up. It's too good. It's wonderful. It's Galliano chicken good! This may not be heart-healthy, but it sure is soul-healthy, so dig in if your soul needs a boost!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go do the dishes. Yes, dear reader, I left all that crap in the sink in my enthusiasm to share this great culinary achievement! (This is a bigger deal than it sounds, since I am pretty dorky about keeping my kitchen clean, but my desire to share recipe greatness trumps all! Good grief -- this is getting sappy, must be the Betelgeuse.)

Peace, brothers and sisters! And get down to Rednersville if you can.